PHARISAISM
ITS AIM AND ITS METHOD

BY

R. TRAVERS HERFORD, B.A.

AUTHOR OF
"CHRISTIANITY IN TALMUD AND MIDRASH"

WILLIAMS & NORGATE
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
1912

PREFACE

Most of the contents of the following pages were given as lectures in Manchester College, Oxford, in the autumn of 1911. I have thought it better to confine myself within the limits of what I then said, rather than to expand and recast the lectures into a complete monograph on the Pharisees. My aim throughout has been to present and make clear the Pharisaic conception of religion, the point of view from which they regarded it, and the methods by which they dealt with it. It is far more important that the reader, especially the Christian reader, should understand the meaning of Pharisaism than that he should be presented with a survey of all the details, theological, ethical, historical, and other, included in the wide field of the Pharisaic literature. I am not without hope that a small book may be read where a large one would be passed by, and that the ends of justice—in this case justice to the Pharisees—may thereby be the better attained. I have not sought to write a panegyric on them, but, so far as may be possible for one who is not a Jew, to present their case from their own standpoint, and not, as is so often done, as a mere foil to the Christian religion. This is one reason why I have not referred to the writings of other scholars, except in the one case of Weber. He is typical of them all in their attitude towards Rabbinical Judaism. Even the fine work of Oesterley and Box, The Religion and Worship of the Synagogue, though it is written in a spirit of courtesy, and with a sincere desire to understand the Rabbinical position and to recognise whatever is good in it, yet judges it by the standard of the Christian religion. Something was still left to be done, by way of treating Pharisaism fairly, that is, without either contempt or condescension; and that "something" I have tried to do—whether successfully or not, the candid reader will judge.

In conclusion, I tender my thanks to the Hibbert Trustees, to whom I owe the opportunity of delivering the lectures, and to the authorities of Manchester College, Oxford, for the invitation to do so.

R. TRAVERS HEREFORD.

Stand, Manchester,

April 1912

CONTENTS

PHARISAISM

CHAPTER I
Historical Sketch

The subject to which in the following pages I shall invite the reader's attention is one which may seem to promise but little of living interest, and still less of religious worth. The Pharisees are presented in the New Testament in no favourable light; and the average Christian has not much further acquaintance with them. Yet, though the name be now disused, the principles of Pharisaism have been maintained down to the present day; and it is these, more than anything else, which have kept Judaism as a living religion. That Pharisaism should wear an unpleasing aspect in the New Testament is not surprising; for it was not in the nature of things that the adherents of the old religion should understand or be understood by those of the new, in the times when they parted company. And there has not been much attempt at mutual understanding in all the centuries since. Christianity could by no possibility have remained in union with Pharisaism; what Jesus began, and what Paul completed, was a severance as inevitable as it was painful. But it was painful because it was the dividing, not of the living from the dead, but of the living from the living. The Judaism of the Pharisees, from which Christianity tore itself away, was no obsolete formalism, but a religion having the power to satisfy the spiritual wants of those who were faithful to it. The form in which its religious ideas were expressed is peculiar, and to Christians by no means attractive. While, therefore, the Christian has usually but little inclination to inquire into the real significance of Pharisaism, and but scanty means of informing himself even if he were so inclined, the fact remains that such knowledge is necessary if he would rightly understand the attitude of the New Testament to the older religion.

Pharisaism is usually judged from the outside, as seen by not very friendly eyes; and, even of those Christians who have studied the Pharisaic literature and who thus know it to some extent from the inside, there are few who seem able to imagine what it must have been to those whose real religion it was. No one but a Jew, of whom it may be said that the Talmud runs in his blood, can fully realise the spiritual meaning of Pharisaism; but sympathy can show even to a Christian much of that meaning, and it is on the strength of that sympathy that I rest my hope of carrying out my present task. Briefly, I wish to show what Pharisaism meant to the Pharisees themselves, as a religion having a claim to be judged on its own merits, and not by comparison with any other. The knowledge thus obtained will throw light upon many passages in the New Testament; but it will be chiefly